Planning out… the closets!

Now that the house is wired and dirty, I’m going back to jobs that involve cutting up lots of things. My piles of leftover wood are going to turn into good, sturdy closet shelving. Nothing fancy, they’ll be simple painted plywood resting on wooden cleats screwed into the walls. Do you remember what the closets were like before? This will be a massive upgrade.

Front bedroom closet

The early 1950’s house I grew up in has shelves oriented sideways to the doors in the closets. My bedroom has the worst one; it’s narrow and deep. But that’s how they made they made them fit together. I’ll be rounding off the ends of the shelves just like this for the back bedroom closet.

Because there’s a pipe chase in that closet so there’s not room for a clothes bar at that end anyway.

For bars, I’ve decided in here to run cleats around the walls for a single clothes bar (68 inches off the floor) and for double bars (42 and 84 inches) but no bar is going in until someone occupies the room. I’ll space some shelves 7 inches apart for shoes and some 12-14 for general storage, with the bottom one 16 off the floor. Apparently this is standard

In the front bedroom, I have bypassing sliding doors that only allow access to half the closet at once. I also have a pull chain light at each end. There’s room at the right side of the door for deep shelving, so I’m going to run shelves up that end (where the rug is) and have a short single bar in front of that door.

On the left side, the door is much closer to the end. There won’t be any shelving here, and I’ll have double bars that are longer than the single bar to the right. And I picked up 3 utilitarian metal shelf brackets for the middle of the closet where the bars end.

Then I have this little closet that I’m going to repurpose for linens. This used to be the deepest in the house at 15 inches. The shelves were extras that my friend’s parents were throwing away, so now they’re free material for me. Some closets will have the nice shelf nosing from these shelves but I won’t be making more of it. This closet is also a challenge because there don’t seem to be any studs in the wall. If you bang it, bits of the original plaster fall off and land on the floor inside.

I think installing the shelf cleats will be simple everywhere else, but there’s only one way to find out for sure. Does anyone have suggestions for getting stuff to hold to these old walls? Or for how to space my shelves and place the bars? Is an asymmetrical “master” closet a recipe for future marital problems?f

Electric is done! Come see my fixtures!

The electric is done! Not only do I have outlets but there’s a new level of prettiness all over the house. And also a lot of questions since everything I do is convoluted. So here’s what we’ve got.

Remember that light from my parents’ upstairs hall? Well my mom never liked it much, so now it’s mine. It is more appropriate for my high ceilings anyway. She asked if it’s nice enough for my vestibule. I think it’s fine, though I’ll upgrade if I find something awesome that’s also cheap in the future.

It has kitschy frosted designs on the glass that belie its 1950’s roots.

The dining room light is still just a pig tail. I bought a very modern chrome chandelier from the 60’s with a friend ages ago. I wasn’t sure about it then, and I’m even less so now. But since I own it and I don’t own anything else, I think I should invest in the missing parts, hang it, and get it in shape to resell for as much as I can. Or maybe I’ll decide it works after all. I do believe in mixing styles.

Then in the kitchen, one of the ceiling fan blade brackets broke… the brackets aren’t quite the same size as the replacements at the Home Depot, so I’ve got to figure out if it’s feasible to get the replacements. And also if I even want to.

In the upstairs hall I’m thrilled to have lights. Thrilled! But I think they’re a little bulky for the space. They were a Christmas gift early on, and they’re from IKEA. And again, although they’re one of the most attractive $30 light fixtures I’ve seen, I’m second guessing the idea to mix in these very modern things. Still they’re a huge upgrade from the old one, which made scary buzzing noises and flickered when I touched it.

Then in the back bedroom, you remember the big plywood canopy I made to cover the open top of the fixture?

It worked as intended! You can’t tell it’s there. I do wonder if these bulbs are too small. But soon there will be attractive and cost effective LED replacements and all bulbs like these will go byebye.

And in the front bedroom, I have a small chandelier. It’s funny because the scales of the two bedrooms are backwards, but I used what I could get where they fit the ceiling heights.

At some point I want to find replacement bobesches for around the bulb sockets. This started off as a bare bulb fixture then had globe fitters clamped on later. I’m really tempted to buy this set on eBay. What do you think? I’d obviously need to strip, polish, and re-lacquer the brass to make it match my fixtures shiny restored finish.

In the bathroom I have bare bulb fixtures that I took out of the basement. I was sad to see that they don’t match and that only one is porcelain. If I’m gonna have crappy temporary fixtures, I’d like for them not to be plastic. But I’d also like for them to be free.

And speaking of the basement, I can actually see down there now! It might have been better when I couldn’t. I have a vintage Lionel train set with Plasticville houses that I’d like to set up down here. Remember, there are 4 children next door. The Irishman and his 3 kids. Can you see there being room for all that in here this Christmas?

And when it comes to the current season, it’s kind of great that I was longing for a breeze out back all summer and got the fan as soon as the heat broke. This one is definitely boring but definitely useful and definitely staying. I even bought it new.

So there’s the effect. Next time I owe you something about the experience.

Paint Wrap Up and Color Reveal

Did I have a good Labor Day weekend? No, it was exhausting and I didn’t really do anything fun. But the house is all painted and I’ve handed it over to the electrician! He didn’t want to waste any time, and how could I say no?

Friday night was the final prep: putting paint samples on the wall. I picked colors off cards for the bathroom and back bedroom, but I’m glad to have spent the $25 on 5 colors this time because I would not have been happy with my first picks. In the living room I channeled my inner Goldilocks. I leven ooked the part some 25 years ago, but I digress…

But now what I actually meant is that my first color choice was overbearing and orangey. The second, my mom’s pick, was insipid. The third was just right.

And I feel like I’m turning into my mom. It matches the stained glass perfectly! I’m not usually a stickler for matching, but it worked out this time.

The kitchen is just off white, the same color as the ceilings everywhere else. It’s a little warm, and that subtle change made a big difference in how the room feels. Like I said, I can put a color on the kitchen cabinets later if this is too boring. Also, all the living room paint is the same color. It just looks different here.

The vestibule is gonna be navy, including the ceiling. But in case the walls get banged up when the rest of the woodwork goes in, I just did this much so far. This color came from a friend; we each need about a half gallon. And I was grateful to not have to pick it out!

Then I did the matching thing. I pulled a neutral out of the marble to get a safe background color for the room. I was surprised to find that the colors that worked best with the marble were greyer than I expected. And again, it took 2 tries. It looks serene and all, but I’ll want to liven up the room… at some point.

Now let’s back up to a night after work next week. The plan was to put all the pre-hung doors in the bathroom now to free up the room for painting and leave them there until after the floors were finished. But there’s no way the supertall closet doors were gonna fit.

So now they’re installed instead and WAHOO I’M SO EXCITED

And let’s celebrate the demise of all those pig tails… except the one where my dining room chandelier goes. But even more exciting than that? Multiple outlets upstairs mean the end of this mess. And new adventures of actually being able to close the bathroom door.

Oh also, my mom loves all my colors. I wanted to call myself independent (ha) but this approval was important.

Rounding Up and Chickening Out

I’ve gone in some circles with paint colors from my bedroom and now I’m thinking of dialing it back. Way back. I’ve gone from strong and dark to light, plain and neutral. Something that won’t compete with all that marble and mahogany. I took a piece of the marble into the paint store with me and was surprised to see that it goes best with greyer tones than I was expecting, so it looks like my walls might end up greige. But you can talk me out of this, too, if you want. I’m still painting the walls and ceiling in the vestibule navy. It will feel like entering the house through a dark, fancy closet.

Then what else have I been up to? Well, the toilet is hooked up again! And weirder yet, it’s clean. But the stored materials are making their way in because it was getting too boring in here. My left knee fits between the two door jambs so it’s all good.

The living and kitchen are both cleared out enough to walk through! Tidying up isn’t my strong suit, so my dad deserves most of the credit for this one.

And ceiling repairs in the kitchen. The light is back where it should be, centered between the beams. And the patches from the waterfall incident are just about smoothed out enough to paint over now.

And I made this thing. Can anyone guess what it is? In other news, I used the band saw I thought we should get rid of.

Answer: the old flush mount light I impulse bought like a year ago is actually a chandelier with lots of pieces missing. So it looks like a flush mount, but if you put it on the ceiling there’d be nothing to cover the electrical box. Now it should be totally usable.

The cuts don’t show. I’m planning on painting the board to match the ceiling so it looks like it’s not there. But I could put an interesting color on it instead. I could, but I don’t think I want to.

Then there are the two ceiling fans I was planning on using in the kitchen and the back yard. I bought one for the back and definitely, definitely look forward to some man-made breezes back there. There aren’t many ceiling fans that are rated to use outside and small enough for my little overhang, but luckily, Lowe’s carries one.

I might put this hand-me-down in the kitchen, too. The switch housing cracked and I’ll probably want to add a light. And then… the motor housing is oak. I don’t really understand why that is a thing. But the blades are real wood and I think a ceiling fan in the kitchen would be handy.

And if I use it, I’ll need to either buy a light kit and I may wind up staring at it angrily. So I may not even be willing to invest 25 bucks into making it usable for now. Maybe I was wrong when I said I had phased out all my boob lights. Also, the chandelier I bought, which is also a questionable choice, is not ready to hang. It’s more likely that I’ll do worse than boob lights and leave the pig tails.

Let’s Talk Paint… all the rest of it

I’ve already painted the bathroom and the back bedroom, so that leaves me the living room, vestibule, kitchen, upstairs hall, and front bedroom. I’d like all this done before the electrician comes in to finish his work so he can put the covers on. And so I don’t have to worry about letting the roller slip and getting paint on my switches and outlets. I totally would.

Also, the ceilings, radiators, and woodwork will be the same off white throughout the house. Most of my doors are made of nice wood that I’ll be staining. The rest will be off white, coherence be damned.

So anyways, my living room has an exposed brick wall, a stained glass transom, and an oriental rug I bought before I thought the house was going to be expensive. (My mom is now using the rug and is in no rush for me to take it back) This room and the front bedroom face west, but I won’t know what the light really looks like until Phase 2 when the awnings come down.

I’m thinking that Vivacious Victorian Amy was right and that this room ought to be gold. Not too yellowy of a gold; the spray foam insulation looked terrible with the brick.

Then there’s the kitchen. I’m not choosing what the cabinets look like till Phase 2, but it has exposed rough sawn beams on the ceiling and a lot of weird angles. The floor will be light wood and the patio door will be stained dark. Whatever color I use has to be the same on the walls and ceiling, show off the beams, look good with the living room color, and leave open the possibility of white appliances if I go that route in the future. I’m considering keeping the walls and ceiling just a warm white. If it’s too boring, I’ll have cabinets on most of the walls anyway and can make them a color.

And in the front bedroom I’m going to use Victorian mahogany and brown marble furniture.

The marble is not particularly dark but the mahogany is. My first plan was to make this room as stark as I could to balance out the furniture, but then a family friend gifted me a period (1920’s coloniaal revival?) light and an oriental rug. (Fun fact: the shades were added in the 80’s. Less fun fact: there were rosettes around the bulb sockets that are now lost before the shades were added. But now we’re talking about Phase 2 problems.)

So anyways, with these things in the mix, the plan to tone the furniture down was out the window and I decided to make it look like a brothel instead. But now I’m thinking of going in the middle and painting the room dark blue, maybe navy but after misnaming the color of my siding I’m not labeling it.

The vestibule is tiny and one of its 2 walls is paneled; the other is exposed brick. I’m thinking of painting the walls and ceiling with what’s left over from the bedroom.

And then there’s the upstairs hall. With stained doors, random width floors, 2 ceiling lights, a skylight, a restored railing, and a 26 inch width, and 3 different colored rooms off of it, I think neutral is the way to go. Possibly the same as the kitchen.

So it looks like once again I’m turning into my mom. This time it’s making everything match a lot. I welcome your ideas. Buying paint is still a week away.

Turning Another Corner

I’ve just begun reintroducing myself to my own house. I’ve been in it plenty lately, but I always looked at the progress and carefully ignored the chaos piling up in the corners. But now it’s my turn to get to work on the place. The first order of business is cleaning. Which means shoveling up sawdust and, sigh, more crumbled plaster.

There are scraps of woodwork everywhere. And long skinny sticks from all the custom rips of all my trim.

2 evenings have most of the Irishman’s chaos cleaned up. I’m dreading the kitchen though. But that’s too boring to write about. The interesting part is moving forward. Having the floors done is the hurdle we knew about all along. The one that my life is going to revolve around sooner or later. But really, there are only two things that NEED to happen before the floors are done:

• Thresholds and transitions where flooring materials change. I have 5 of these, 4 of which will be wood and need to be done.
• Emptying the house except the bathroom, basement, and back yard. The woodwork that’s been pre-cut has to all be labeled and then moved into the bathroom.

That’s it. Doesn’t sound like a lot. But then there’s a lot more stuff that it would be nice to do.

There’s the wild card, final installation of the electrical stuff. Because I don’t want power strips and extension cords running all over the house from the couple of working outlets I have. To do this, I’ll be painting the kitchen, living room, front bedroom, and vestibule. The walls in the upstairs hall probably won’t survive moving furniture unscathed, so they’ll have to wait.

That’s the plan for Memorial Day weekend. Paint the house. We’ll talk about colors later. Before that happens, there are those patches in the kitchen ceiling from the plumbing stupidity flood. I never finished sanding and mudding the new joints.

And then there’s the ceiling light. I remember texting the electrician, “Do you think I should center the light between the beams or center it in the room?”  He replied, “Center the room.” While the Irishman was in the house not long ago, he looked up and asked why I didn’t center it between the beams.

The lesson is, don’t let your tradesmen make aesthetic choices for you! At least not when you already know what you want. I’m redoing it now though.

Then I have a laundry list of things that I’d like to do if I can.

• Clean the toilet and reinstall the tank. I’m tired of flushing it by pouring water in from a bucket.
• Clean out the oven. It’s full of little broken architectural bits that I needed to keep safe to put things back together. And receipts.
• Stain the patio door, the living room window alcoves, the banister, and the secondhand IKEA bed frame I’ll be using. They’ll all get the same dyed finish that I got for the doors upstairs, but since some of those doors are nailed into their new jambs, I won’t be finishing any of them just yet.
• Closet shelving. I’d like them done in the front bedroom and linen closets. This will eliminate most of my scrap wood and give me more places off the floor to put my crap.

And that’s the bulk of it! Next time I think we need to talk about paint colors again.

Building the Paneled Panel

Did you think I forgot about this? You might have since I haven’t mentioned it since January. It’s looked like this for about as long as I can remember. Leave your kids at home.

But the panel on my stairway wall is very much still happening. Here’s the sketch I made way back when.

The whole point of doing this was to make the wall come out for access to the basement. I can’t remove it all though because there are switches and wires in that wall. The Craftsman-style long skinny panels are perfect though because the panel closest to the door can be fixed while the next 3 come off. On top of that, there was one aesthetic problem I wanted to solve. Not a huge one, but while I’m at it…

You see, the door to the basement used to be in the kitchen and someone filled it in (weirdly), moved the stairs toward the front of the house, cut the door down, and put it on the side of the stairwell. This was a big improvement in the kitchen, but I wasn’t fond of the weird wall where the door used to be or the way the casing around the new door jutted into the stairway woodwork. Plus, there was a triangular chunk of the wood hacked out and filled in with drywall and caulk. I think this happened in the 50’s. (And remember, the house didn’t look that bad when I bought it.)

I decided to use a wainscot cap to finish the paneling, which is now thicker than the edge of the stairs. And there is no casing at all around the door, just a little strip of sash bead. And the cap comes so close to the door that the bead doesn’t even go all the way around. The Irishman thought I was crazy for wanting to do it this way, but he said he’d build it. He sent me a photo of the opening with sash bead all the way around the door, which was wrong! So I quickly sketched it (not to scale) and texted him a photo. (Though this is a scan. It looks better.)

And then he built it and it’s perfect. Except that little hacked out triangle. He’s going to stick a piece of plywood in there and then fill the cracks with Bondo. As in auto body filler.

And remember how I was going trim inside the panels that looked like the sticking on the door? That didn’t quite work out. He hates wasting molding passionately, so he made custom panel sticking out of the scraps of my upstairs casing. It’s that small piece to the left. He says we’ll find a place to use the reeded part to the right, too.

So that’s where we are now. It was hard. And because I’m paying him by the hour, it was expensive. But I love it, and if I get my finances in order by 30 it’s all good, right? Stay tuned, finishing touches are coming together so there might be a big reveal in the near future!

Staining Doors: The Plan

So to summarize my last post, the big challenge with my doors is blending together old doors with varnish residue on them, new cuts into the old wood, gouges, variations in color, and one of them with poplar doweled onto the bottom. To accomplish this, I want a stain that mostly stays on top of the wood. A penetrating stain might leave light blotches in spots where the old varnish prevented it from taking. And plus, this way I can build it up if I don’t like it. Woodworkers would call this type of stain a toner.

To do it, I went to the Woodcraft store all the way out in Downingtown. Yes it’s far, but I work out that way so it wasn’t too bad. And I bought TransTint brown mahogany dye to mix into General Finishes high performance water based top coat. I used the off cut from one of my doors, an extra piece of poplar molding, and another strip of pine. And I set out to measure out the dye and realized I didn’t have anything that would do small volumes like that. So I went into the kitchen to swipe my mom’s mini measure. (I would have replaced it quickly). And to my horror, the lettering had worn off!

At this point, I imagined that the test/planning work for this project would last a month instead of a day and I got mad. I was mad at my mom for putting it in the dishwasher. But I knew this wasn’t fair, so I refocused on being mad at the manufacturer for not making it dishwasher safe. I was on the internet looking up unit conversions and got mad at congress for voting down Thomas Jefferson’s bill to put us on the metric system. And then I found them at Bed Bath and Beyond for $3.50 and was mad to pay 2 dollars more than I thought they’d cost. But I was back in business. Here are the tools of the trade.

So in the back we have random bits of wood. In front of that we have the top coat product, a plastic can for measuring out the finish, the dye stain, a mini measure for measuring the dye. And because I plan on wiping this on, I have a gross old stretched out pair of my dad’s underpants and a piece of foam padding.

And the result?

That’s the old finish of my door on front and a new cut on top. I put the dyed varnish onto both. There’s almost no discernable difference. Then I have more pine and the poplar. (I’m painting my trim, but one door has poplar from the same lumber yard fused onto it.)

HOW IS THIS REAL LIFE? This is staining and finishing in one step. And it looks good!

So the plan is I’ll do a little sanding to round off the edges of the doors that were cut and smooth out any rough spots where the doors are gouged. I won’t try to make anything look new. Then I’ll wipe on one thin coat of this dyed poly. Then I’ll wipe on additional coats to any areas that I don’t like. And then I’ll use poly that’s not dyed to make sure everything has at least 3 coats on it.

Prepping for stain – the challenge

So this weekend the Irishman is working again, and he asked me not to be there. So it’s a full weekend in the suburbs for me. I decided to make myself good for something and start testing out my staining procedure. I have quite a few challenges to overcome. Here’s what I decided.

First of all, I think I want my floors to be blond. Really blond, like a water-based finish that won’t amber them or anything. That means the inlaid border in the living room will really show up. The finish that came with the house was an oil based poly, so picture them even lighter than in this before photo. It will be a bit modern, but I like that. Try to talk me out of it if you want.

Living room, front

The trim is going to be off white everywhere in the house. My first plan was to strip the doors, fill all the gouges, and paint them the same as the trim. Because when I bought them they looked like crap.

But stripped, they look way different. All that damage from previous abuse morphed into character that I like, and now there’s no way I could paint these.

But there’s still a problem. You see those crude gouges in the one door? The door had to be cut down to make those go away. And one door was too short so the Irishman extended it by fusing new poplar onto 120-year-old pine. (I’m taking a wild guess at the age because these were salvaged).

And the mansion doors on the front bedroom closet are some other softwood, maybe hemlock.

So now I have a few unique problems. I want the doors to keep their character, so that means I won’t be sanding the living daylights out of them. Plus, sanding out the reeded parts would make me want to die. But I want the new cuts to blend with the old wood. And that one door that smelled like rotting meat while I was stripping it and came out lighter than the others? I want to darken it up so it’s close.

So this will be a challenge. Staining pine is always a pain because the soft, light part absorbs tons of stain and turns darker than the dark wood, which absorbs nothing. And sometimes it gets blotchy. But now I’ve added a new challenge. Some of that character probably comes from traces of the original finish that I didn’t get off. And even if I wanted to get rid of it all, I already stripped them all like 15,000 times. I can’t handle 15,001. I’m finished. But if I used a conventional penetrating stain, I could have a big problem with it not taking at all where there was old varnish. But how can I handle this? I think I’ll have to make it a cliff hanger.

I can’t keep tops and bottoms straight

I may have gotten your attention with that title, but what we’re actually talking about today is the dark side of handing my finish work over to someone else and leaving, even someone I trust.

You might remember how much I liked the idiosyncratically mismatched woodwork that came with my house when I bought it. I liked it so much that I decided to keep it mismatched, even when I replaced it all. While the Irishman was working on jambs, he decided to start on the trim work. We hadn’t really talked about it. And I was working in my parents’ garden without my phone. By the time I was done, he had downstairs trim up all over the second floor.

I told him what happened, and let him take it down and fix it. And I said, “Now you understand that the tops and sides are the same trim with mitered corners, right?” And he said yes.

But I came in, and he had the upstairs trim installed on the sides cut square! I flipped, called him, and told him I couldn’t afford more of what he used. And he said, “I thought you were talking about the mitered returns under the window sills. I’m sorry, I can’t keep tops and bottoms straight.”

And so came the best that’s what (s)he said of all time.

By the way, this is what he meant by the mitered returns under the window sills. They’re very well done.

So first he said he’d buy some more of the trim. Then he found out what I spent on it, and instead he said he’d dowel it together. “Because they call us joiners for a reason.” I’m pretty satisfied with this job. If somehow it shows, it’s part of the story now.

Then, finally, he got the back bedroom window just the way I wanted it. Remember, there are two ways to do a double window. You can run the trim around the whole thing and put a flat trim on the muntin inside it, or you can run the casing around both windows. The latter way is harder, but I wanted it that way. Why, because I can inside mount my blinds. And he did it beautifully.

Third time’s a charm.

Now, there’s another dark side to all this. He took a pretty good chunk of… all the money I have. He likes me a lot, but not enough to do this kind of work for free. So I was kind of terrified. But I found a way to make it work. A credit card. I got an introductory 0% interest rate. That means every Home Depot purchase, every gallon of gas, and every drink I buy at a bar for the next 2 months is deferred until 2016. But hey, I’m used to living modestly. I can keep it up a bit longer, right?